How I Lost by Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton never thought her wealth, political elitism, corruption, contempt for working class people, opposition to public health care, Wall Street connections and military backing for jihadists in Libya and Syria — triggering the worst refugee crisis in living memory — would get in the way of her inexorable journey to the White House.

Endorsed by Obama, she assumed she could sweep aside socialist nomination contender Bernie Sanders. She was confident because she thought that the truth about her operations would never get out.

However, in July 2016, WikiLeaks released emails hacked from the accounts of Clinton and her campaign team. They also released transcripts from speeches she had made to Wall Street companies going back to April 2013, for which she was personally paid 91 six-figure sums totalling $21.6 million.

The leaks threw a huge spanner in the Clinton works. Five senior leaders on the Democratic Party’s National Committee lost their jobs, their misuse of party rules against Sanders exposed.

Clinton’s team went all out to use their puppet media contacts to smear and undermine the feared left wing contender who was demanding that Clinton reveal her connections on Wall Street. Bill Clinton’s former policy adviser Joel Johnson wrote, “Bernie needs to be ground to a pulp. Crush him as hard as you can.”

This book brings the leaked material together in an edited treasure trove for the radical left, setting the remarks of Clinton and her cronies in a class conscious political context. Parallels are drawn between Sanders and Corbyn.

The introduction explains the impact of the leaks and summarises their content under useful headings, and the body of the book exposes Clinton in her own words. Appendices list speeches and how much she was paid for them and full-length emails detailing Clinton’s strategy intervening in Libya and Syria.

Hillary Clinton made a speech to the National Multifamily Housing Council (a trade association of developers, property financiers and landlords) in April 2013 where she laid out her approach to being a politician who needs to appear to be on the side of voters who are struggling financially, while at the same time bolstering the interests of the rich. Her words, which she never thought would be made public, were: “politics is like a sausage being made. I mean, it is unsavoury, and it has always been that way. So, you need both a public and a private position.”

This book tears through the cover-ups to reveal the grisly, bloody reality of our rulers’ sordid sausage factory. The commentary argues for a regulated, reformed, wealth-sharing socialist-capitalist alternative, and doesn’t challenge the notion of the nation-state, which revolutionaries will take issue with. It does ask the question, should those wanting a better world back the least-worst candidate — or throw our weight behind radical alternatives who we are told are unelectable? Read and pass it on.